A plan to liberalise the EU sugar market, one of the most highly subsidised aspects of European agricultural policy, has been thrown into doubt after lawmakers rejected a proposal to end production quotas by 2015.
The European Parliament’s agriculture committee voted instead on Wednesday by a margin of 32 to 11 to extend the quotas until 2020. Some observers predicted they could last well beyond that.
Sweden’s European Union presidency hasn’t even started yet, but people in Brussels are already saying that the Swedish presidency website is the most impressive that any EU country has so far come up with. Its homepage is clean, simple and intelligently presented, and the entire site is nice and easy to navigate.
I particularly like the section “The EU in our daily lives”, which is a slideshow of 15 photographs that attempt to explain how EU laws and activities shape so much of everyday European life. It kicks off with a snapshot of a rather lugubrious-looking dog and the caption: “Dogs and cats travelling within the EU must have their own pet passports.” Read more
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Peter Spiegel is the FT's Brussels bureau chief. He returned to the FT in August 2010 after spending five years covering foreign policy and national security issues from Washington for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He first joined the FT in 1999 covering business regulation and corporate crime in its Washington bureau, before spending four years covering military affairs and the defence industry in London and Washington.
Joshua Chaffin is one of the FT's EU correspondents, covering areas including policies on trade, the environment and energy. He has worked in the FT's Brussels bureau since late 2008 and before that was an FT correspondent in New York and Washington DC. 
Alex Barker is EU correspondent, covering the single market, financial regulation and competition. He was formerly an FT political correspondent in the UK and joined the FT in 2005.
James Fontanella-Khan is FT's Brussels correspondent, covering media, telecom and internet regulation as well as justice, employment and social affairs and its impact on eastern Europe. He was formerly an FT correspondent in India. He joined the FT in 2006. 
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